


Inconsequence

by Michelle_A_Emerlind



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: 800 Word Challenge, Canon verse, Character Study, First Kiss, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Rickyl Writer's Group
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 03:55:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5233064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michelle_A_Emerlind/pseuds/Michelle_A_Emerlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl is not defined by his past. (For the 800-Word Challenge for the Rickyl Writer's Group)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inconsequence

**Author's Note:**

> This is a character study piece regarding Daryl and his scars/past. I fully recognize that not every person who goes through traumatic events deals with those events in the same way. Likewise, I think there is room for interpretation on how Daryl deals with his past and this viewpoint below is intriguing to me for his characterization. 
> 
> This was posted for the 800-Word Challenge for the [Rickyl Writer's Group](http://rickylwritersgroup.tumblr.com/)!

Daryl is Methuselah, Gran Abuelo, Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi--one of those old trees that has stayed standing longer than empires, than nations, then the rolling shift of seas. He is quiet, but steady. Constant and undestroyed. And sure, yes, of course, there are days when the wind has whipped in, when the lightning cracks itself down amongst the trunk, the thrashing gusts rattle the preserved branches. There are times in which he wonders if this will be the day he will die. But it never is. Nothing consumes him. His will will not be eradicated. He is not and has never been the graffiti painted along the bark, the vicious words of low meaning men, the scratches of knives.

His skin will not define him. How would he let it? What he is outside is not what he is within. No one sees the way the roots tangle to become the earth, the way stone merges with wood more solid than it, the way it _stands_ , the way it _towers_ , the way it _becomes_ something ancient and true.

Which is why Daryl is so shocked when he meets Rick, why Rick’s eyes flicking once upon his body in the farmhouse bed and taking him in deeper than flesh rattle him to his bones. Even from that first second, Rick never speaks of it. They understand each other on a level deeper than civilization, deeper than any societally constructed framework. Daryl is the tree and Rick is the Hydra--the smallest, simplest of things, the organism that never grows, never tires, is complete in its immortality.

They are two beings who understand.

Rick never asks Daryl about it, never questions his past or his family, the licks upon his body, the carry of his shoulders. Because Rick doesn’t need to know and Daryl doesn’t need to speak. The day is done, gone, over with. The sun has long since cast its rays upon that earth and the clock that used to be so loud in Daryl’s ears where he lay on the living room carpet, blood pooling under his skin and broken out in rivers deeper than death.

The irony of it has never been lost on Daryl. That there he was, collapsed and just feet away from any phone and any help, breathing what he thought would be his last and somewhere across town, hundreds of tubes all in him, cut like snakes, and five doctors around, his father was dead. Dead from a broken rib gone punctured and then complicated and bad. And all Daryl’s wounds, all the _too much_ with the _he shouldn’t have lived_ , didn’t end him. He had sucked the life from his father dry like redemption, like some form of karma rippling through the sticky, unforgiving air.

It wasn’t even his father’s death that broke the cycle. Because even then, dying on the floor, Daryl wasn’t afraid. Hadn’t been since his knuckles had broken into William’s flesh for the first time, since the thought had sparked across his mind more violent than anything they ended up doing to each other: _even if you die, you die your own man_. And how could anything own him ever again after that? How could his father even matter once it was done? And how could Merle, busting out the jail door on his release day with alternative relief and anger flexed in his eyes change the course of anything that had happened or would happen?

So no. Daryl doesn’t need to speak about anything before that point. Because anything before then is meaningless.

Just like Daryl knows, too, of course he does, that there are things Rick doesn’t need to speak about. Things that don’t matter to him despite what anyone else in the group might think. Shane is gone and done. What is there to say? Lori, too. And even the simplest of things, well, they need no answer. Like when Rick kisses Daryl for the first time, hard and hot and willing, their bodies alternatively shivering and burning. There is no label for that, no _discussion_ of what Rick is and what Rick isn’t and what Daryl is and what Daryl isn’t, what either of them have and haven’t been through.

There is only the moment of clarity. Only Rick’s eyes like the hardest, smoothest diamonds cutting into Daryl’s soul and Daryl’s breath cold in the morning air. Because here, alone in the dawn with only their fingers touching one another for company, Daryl sees it. Sees past any clothes Rick might wear, any look he might have, anything that anyone else might ever see. Daryl see the whole of it, the deep down, ticking truth. And Rick, sleek like broken glass, rough like the turning of winds, opens his eyes and sees it back.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr Links:
> 
> [MAE's Rickyl Fics and Recs](http://maerickyl.tumblr.com/): Where you can find a list of my fanfic, fanfic recs, and snippets of works in progress.  
> [Michelle A. Emerlind](http://michelleaemerlind.tumblr.com/): My general tumblr where I put stuff? And things? And just whatever I want.  
> [Rickyl Writer's Group](http://rickylwritersgroup.tumblr.com/): The home of the Rickyl Writer's Group! Come join! We love new people!


End file.
